Hilton Head Island: started

        Friends are coming this weekend to photograph GANNET under sail for CRUISING WORLD and other purposes, so I decided I better see if a Torqeedo would start.

        I’ve been sleeping on GANNET and first thing this morning I cleared the port pipe berth, slithered aft and retrieved outboard mount and Torqeedo and mounted them on the stern.  The motor started at the touch of the button, bless its little electric heart.  The battery, last charged at the end of February, showed 100%.

        I also tested the tiller pilots.  All three Autohelms work.  There is a loose connection in the wiring for the Pelagic which I will track down in time, but is of no immediate importance.

        At 7:00 the air temperature was a mild 73ºF/23ºC, but sweat was rolling off me, and this was not hard labor.

————

        A long pier leads out to Skull Creek Marina so that boats are in deep enough water.  I am told that even so, at extremely low tides some of the bigger sailboats touch bottom.  Not GANNET.

        This is only the last quarter of the pier.  It is as wide as a two lane highway in order to support the travel lift.  Boats hauled from the water are taken a long way to the minuscule boat yard ashore.

       

          I like watching the spartina cover and uncover with the tides.  So do herons and egrets who work the sea grass mostly at mid-tide.

        An original.

And a Prisma variation.

Hilton Head Island: C. S. Forester and Sara Teasdale

        A long, long time ago when I was young I read all eleven of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower novels twice and several of his other novels as well.  He was a very good and entertaining writer.

        I don’t suppose I have thought much about him since until a few weeks ago when his novel THE GENERAL was one of the offerings at BookBub.  

        The officer of the title is Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Curzon who rose to his rank early in WWI and commanded more than 100,000 men up to the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  

        I have written somewhere that soldiers often die not for their cause but because of the egos and stupidity of generals and politicians.

        THE GENERAL provides the best explanation I have ever read of how Great Britain’s officer caste killed so many men futilely.

        After reading it, I bought two more of Forester’s novels.  THE GUN, which I have read before, set in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars; and THE GOOD SHEPHERD, about a convoy crossing the North Atlantic during WWII.

————

        At least one of you has viewed ALBATROSS. Two counting Carol.  Three counting me.

        The film is part of The Midway Project, named after the Pacific Ocean atoll, once significant during WWII and now the nesting place for millions of birds.

        I read a book titled ALBATROSS a few years ago that must also be part of the project, so I knew what to expect.

        The film is both beautiful and tragic.  The beauty is in the birds themselves and the inspired and sometimes very clever photography.  The tragic in the corpses of dead birds cut open to reveal the almost unbelievable amount of plastic inside them.  Often dozens of pieces in a single bird.  One had both a disposable cigarette lighter and a toothbrush in it.

        David, the one of you I know viewed the film, after doing so sent me a poem by Sara Teasdale.

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white, 

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone

        I must confess that I did not know of Sara Teasdale, so I googled and learned that she was born in Saint Louis, as was I, and wrote another fine poem often connected with her suicide that reminds me of parts of two I wrote long ago.

        Those two were enough for me to buy a Kindle edition of her collected works for $0.99.

        Sometimes you do get something for nothing.  Or almost.  But you already know that.

Hilton Head Island: albatrosses and plastic

        Today is World Oceans Day.  For some us every day is.

        Recently the GUARDIAN, the INDEPENDENT, and the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, among others, have run articles about plastic pollution.  This is, of course, a disaster that has taken place entirely since 1950, within the lifetimes of many of us still living.

        I thank Martin for reminding me about World Oceans Day and for providing a link to a new film about albatross which can be viewed in its entirety at:  https://vimeo.com/264508490   
        I have not yet watched it.  I will later today.  But I have a good idea of what it will show and expect some of it will be tragic.

        I don’t know if any of you have read ISLAND.  Published in 1944, James Norman Hall made the observation even then that our species was becoming a cancer to the planet.  And like other cancers we are metastasizing at an ever increasing rate.

        Martin, who was a merchant marine officer, observed that he who was on ships in the Southern Ocean and I who have sailed there are among the few who have seen in person the magnificent albatrosses in flight over those waters.  And that we might well be the last.

Hilton Head Island: my best words; Raptored

        Like I expect most of you, I don’t often visit the main site.  I regret having separated the journal from that site, but uploading and revising a post with Blogger is decidedly faster than with iWeb.

        Nevertheless I have just made changes to the home page of inthepresentsea.com.

        This followed reading an interview this past weekend with an original artist during which some of my words were mentioned.

        While there is no doubt in my mind that ‘A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.’ is my best known and likely will be longest remembered sentence, my statement of an artist’s defining responsibility may be my best.  I am not aware that anyone else has ever said it better.  

        I wasn’t sure there was room for those words.  I’m glad there is.

————

        I finished applying the Raptor non-skid to GANNET’s deck.  Just in time.  A blister has formed on my thumb from using the shears.

    

    Being white on white, the Raptor panels don’t show up as well in the photos as in person.

        I like the way it looks and it seems to be a good non-skid surface.  Water over the deck, inevitable in time on GANNET, will tell.

Hilton Head Island: ashore; waves

        I am sipping a cold martini.  It is very good.

        The condo continues to be stalled.  No work has been done now for two weeks and I have no idea when any will be done.

        At times I consider starting a new page on the main site listing the evidence that we, homo sapiens, are not an intelligent species.

        If I did, the years 1914-1945 would head the list.  Many other spans could be included, but those are inconvertible.  

        Also would be lotteries.  Not that they exist, but that people buy tickets.

        And third would be this renovation.

        I am not going to go into the detestable details and will not respond to emails asking about them.  If you have been reading this journal, you are aware of how much I liked Hilton Head Island.  The tense of the verb is accurate.  At this moment I wish that I had never heard of Hilton Head Island.  Perhaps that will change again in time.  Perhaps.

        In the meanwhile I have moved back into this shell.

        Two afternoons ago I heard thunder and glanced up and saw an apocalyptic sky over Pinckney Island.  I had no food up here and knew that when the storm hit, it would do so in an instant.

        I made it back to GANNET with a minute to spare before the rain and wind came.  Even though protected by larger boats on either side, GANNET heeled and was buffeted.  I turned on the wind instrument which showed a maximum gust of 35 knots.

        Yesterday afternoon I walked back under sunny skies and when I opened the hatch, the Great Cabin was 104.3ºF/40.16C.  Not quite the 106º it reached in Marathon, but hot enough.

       Only the guest bathroom and the utility room and the screened porch and deck are intact here.  Everything else is gutted.  The air conditioning works and so does the Internet.  Some, not all, electrical outlets are functional.

        So we ordered a coffee maker, portable microwave, and a tiny 1.7 cubic foot refrigerator at a total cost of less than $200.

        They arrived today.  Thus I have a cold martini.  And will soon have another.  Then, but for the lack of ice, eight or ten more.

--------

        I thank Art for links to some spectacular photographs of waves taken by Rachael Talibart.

https://www.rachaeltalibart.com/ocean

https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.wired.com/story/wave-photography/&source=gmail&ust=1528215970714000&usg=AFQjCNGYZ-kQJcYzybuCTriOkee_zeDrVw

Skull Creek: partially decked; a minority opinion

        Three 2 meter x 1 meter/six ½ feet x 3 ¼ feet rolls of Raptor non-skid were delivered late yesterday and I got five pieces in place this morning, one on either side of the cockpit, and three in the bow.

        GANNET’s non-skid is eclectic. Diamond pattern Treadmaster on the cockpit sole; two strips of a New Zealand product on the starboard side of the foredeck to protect it when anchoring; and now the Raptor.

        The Raptor is interesting.  A different kind of surface with less texture and therefore less abrasive to skin and clothes.  It costs about $110 or $115 a sheet and is easy to work with.  I cut it with a shears.  One caveat is that after making cuts, the paper covering the adhesive on the bottom tends to shred on the edge of the cut and must be removed carefully.

        As I may have mentioned Raptor says the decking is UV resistant and should last seven years.  

        If I am still alive and still own GANNET, I’ll let you know.

        Here is a link to their website.  I don’t believe they make the diamond pattern any longer.  If you click on their online brochure, what I am using is like that on the Transpac 52.

        I have not yet figured out what shapes I am going to use in the area around the mast.

————

        At 32º North Hilton Head Island is well beyond the Tropics, but it does not feel like it.  

        I had to wait for the dew to dry on the deck before starting work this morning and then had to stop when sweat pouring into my eyes made it impossible to see.  91ºF/almost 33ºC at 1 p.m.

        I understand that in most of the world summer is longed for and cherished.  Not here.  Not by me.  It is too hot and the hurricane season.

        I can hardly wait for November.

Skull Creek: less; the longest night

        Some of you will recall my quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the early French aviator and writer, that perfection in airplane design is achieved not when there is nothing more you can add, but when there is nothing more you can remove.  Obviously I believe the same is true of boats.  And writing.

        So today I removed two small sheet tracks on either side of the mast.  They were on GANNET when I bought her and I kept thinking that someday I might use them, but not having done so now for seven years and more than 25,000 miles, it became obvious I never will. 

        I wanted to get them off before new non-skid decking arrives later this week.  It is made by a company in Seattle called Raptor and is said to be similar to Treadmaster, but less harsh.  I have Treadmaster on the cockpit sole.  It is excellent non-skid, but very hard on skin.

        I learned of Raptor in the Yahoo Moore Owner’s group.

        Their website does not seem to be fully up to date and the sheets I am receiving are not shown there.  They did send me a sample before I placed my order.

        I have become tired of having to repaint the deck with Interdeck every year or so.

        I filled the bolt holes, five for each track, with Dr. Sails self-mixing epoxy.  It is expensive, but very good, and I didn’t have a container to mix standard epoxy.

        In an orgy of ambition, I also re-glued the velcro for the screens around the hatches.  For this I used another effective adhesive, Gorilla Super Glue.

        And finally I went on deck and polished the metal.

        I have still to oil the interior and re-bed the main traveler.

        The interior needs repainting.  That might happen, but not right now.

        And on the list is the eternal:  look for leak near the bow.  That is a gesture.  I have been looking for years and don’t really expect I will ever find it.  It is not serious.  It is a mystery.

————

        Steve Earley’s entry today, “a perfect day, the longest night” is classic.  It might be subtitled:  you do what you have to do, and could only be written by a really good sailor in a really small boat.

        Outstanding.  

        And if you go to the entry you will have the added bonus of getting to view the great lead photo, which I posted here, again.

Skull Creek: the greatest strength; my right foot

        Evening.  Overcast sky.  Cooling breeze blowing up Skull Creek from the south.  The wind has been from the south for more than a week.

        Here we were only on the fringe of Alberto, which in any case is not a significant weather system.   Moderate steady rain that fell through last night ended this morning.  I took my lunch and foul weather parka when I walked up to use the condo’s Internet, but did not need the parka.

        I watched parts of a couple of baseball games, caught up on email, viewed some video links sent by friends, showered, then came back down to GANNET.

        Dinner of freeze dry Santa Fe Chicken and Rice, accompanied by boxed red wine and John Luther Adams  BECOME OCEAN followed by Handel’s MESSIAH.  Sometimes only substantial music will do.

        This was my first freeze dry dinner in a while.  

        Last week I ate ashore with Carol’s family and yesterday I biked to the supermarket and brought back among other things a prepared salad.

 ————

        A reader wrote after my most recent quote of Ecclesiastes 9:11 that it is romantic, but not the way the smart money bets.  I have heard that before, but Ecclesiastes is not even slightly romantic, it is harshly realistic.  Ask millions of farmers and fishermen who have worked hard and seen their efforts destroyed by weather.  Ask 6,000,000 Jews who happened to live in Europe in 1940.  Ask the middle class in Germany in the runaway inflation of the 1920s.  It is a useful cultural myth that if you work hard, you will achieve your goals.  It sometimes is even true.  But Ecclesiastes knows that however hard you strive, however intelligent, however strong you are, you can still be destroyed by time and chance.

        I have said that Ecclesiastes 9:11 is the greatest truth I have ever read.

        The greatest strength is also Christian:  to absorb the evil done to you without passing it on.  A strength not often practiced by those who call themselves Christian.  A strength that if I have ever achieved at all, took me more than half a century to do so.

        Perhaps I am thinking of this because I was listening to THE MESSIAH.  

        I am not a Christian, but the religion has inspired some wonderful music to which I am about to return.

Skull Creek: essential wind; two on a small boat; Gannets

   

   ‘Wind more essential than blood’ the poet wrote.  Obviously not literally true, but for a few almost.  

        I have probably written that before and will again.
        Carol is on her way back to the 600’ flatlands and until a few minutes ago I was standing in the companionway, sipping Botanist and listening to the non-classical playlist on the Boom 2s.  A partially cloudy sky and a 12 to 14 knot breeze blowing up Skull Creek from the south.  I loved the feel of the wind on my skin.  The land has been too much with me these last few days and will be again.  But to be here, on the water, feeling GANNET move beneath me—who wants stolidly and stability?—was wonderfully restoring and will enable me to face the hassles ahead.

        Just before I came below a snowy egret walked past.  Black beak, yellow feet=Snowy.  Yellow  beak and black feet=Great.  Also Great Egrets are bigger, but that depends on their age.

        This snowy didn’t even notice me.  Another— though I cannot be certain it is the same one, I believe it is—has now twice simply stepped aside when I walked past.  It knows I won’t bother it.  I hope its trust in our species is not betrayed.

        An aside on pronouns.

        English is an expressive language, but pronoun deficient.

        When I wrote ‘it’ about the egret, traditionally in English when the sex is unknown, the masculine is used.  This is clearly sexist, but to say 'he/her' is graceless and 'it' doesn’t seem right when the creature is one sex or the other.

        Also the second person pronoun,  in English both singular and plural are ‘you’.  In many languages there is a superior difference between the personal and the general.  The French ‘tu’ and ‘vous’ for example.  

        No conclusion.  Just a writer’s musings.

        While I was standing in the companionway, I watched another snowy egret walking down the next dock following by a large man.  The man was gaining.  Both disappeared and reappeared behind boats.  I image the egret looking anxiously over its shoulder.  Two boats from the end of the dock it took flight and circled around to land behind the man.

————

        Carol’s parents, sister and brother-in-law were also here this week.  They rented a condo on the ocean side of the island, which is a very different world.  It was a nice place, right on the beach and with fine views of the ocean, but in two five story buildings there is only one couple who are permanent residents.  
       To bike to the ocean is about a six mile ride and you can ride bikes on the beach.  

        I will.

        Since Tuesday Carol has been sleeping on GANNET.

        This necessitates a third interior configuration, beyond passage mode and harbor, but the v-berth is large enough for two.

        We had breakfast in the Great Cabin, which requires coordinated movements but was satisfactory, and ate other meals with her family ashore.

        GANNET is now back in harbor mode and Carol is missed.

--------

I thank Tom for sending me the POINTS EAST cover.

That GANNET is a handsome boat, but is suspect that some GANNET's are faster than others.

Hilton Head Island: treading water; open and shut

        I have not posted this week because Carol is here and we are having daily meetings with the contractor, inspectors, condo committee members.  All those aspects of normal modern life that I have avoided for  forty years and make me long for the purity and simplicity of the open ocean.

        Joel happened a few days ago to send me a relevant quote from the Fitsgerald translation of THE ODYSSEY.  I thank him.

Only Odysseus time and again turned craning towards the sun, impatient for day's end, for the open sea. Just as a farmer's hunger grows, behind the bolted plow and share, all day afield, drawn by his team of wine dark oxen: sundown is a blessing for him, sending him homeward stiff in the knees from weariness, to dine; just so, the light on the sea rim gladdened Odysseus

       
        The condo is nearly gutted.  No longer a refrigerator for yoghurt, ice and cold martinis.  Or frozen Lean Cuisines, which doesn’t matter because there is no longer a micro wave either.

        About all that is left is the guest bathroom, electricity, the Internet and air conditioning. 

        Due to dreary complications no work is presently being done. 

        I’m on the screened porch.  We do still have the view.

————

        Praise for the South African sailor who has long claimed an open boat circumnavigation appeared at the Sailing Anarchy site.

        This specious claim has been made far too long.

        I did not correct it earlier because I did not want it to appear that I was protecting my own open boat voyage, but now that Yvon Bourgnon has made an open boat circumnavigation that is no longer an issue and I sent an email linking to my journal post last year about the South African boat, which Sailing Anarchy calls ‘an open and shut case.’

        You can find all this here.

        Scroll down to ‘Open Sore’ and ‘Biggie Small’.

Hilton Head Island: sex on the deck; the Polish voyage revisited

        I am writing from the screen porch about to walk down to GANNET to spend the night.   I want to post this here where I have good Internet.

        Yesterday I was sitting on a Sportaseat on the floor when I noticed an anole on the deck, his red neck pouch inflated.  This is done to intimidate male rivals or to attract females.

        I waited a few moments and then stood and found two anoles entwined.  They were not fighting. The male greener and smaller than his female partner.

        The photo is the best I could make with my iPhone shot from within the condo.  I did not want to move closer and disturb their moment.

        Afterward a bright green anole remained on our deck most of the afternoon.

        I saw him twice dart forward, catch something, and chew satisfactorily.

        I do not know if it was the same small lizard.  

        If it was, perhaps he has fond memories and hopes of repetition.  I wish him fulfillment.

        A few days ago I saw a brown anole walking along the gutter drain.  I don’t know why we find some creatures attractive—koalas and baby pandas, and others abhorrent—cockroaches; but I find green anoles charming and brown not.

--------

        I thank James and Markus for clarifying some aspects of the Polish sailor’s voyage.

        He did not self fund the voyage.  He had sponsorship.  More than twenty.  

        As I expected his boat was not the smallest to circumnavigate.  An Australian, Serge Testa, circumnavigated in an 11’10’/3.61 meter boat in the late 1980s.  

        The Polish boat is probably the smallest to have circumnavigated nonstop, but only by a few inches/centimeters.

        Still it was a difficult and impressive voyage, although really slow.  270 days was less than 100 miles a day.  I pretty much did that in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE.  I’ll leave it at that.

        It is quite possible that the Polish sailor never claimed to have been self-funded or the smallest boat to circumnavigate.  Journalist have been known to get facts wrong.

        You can read on the Internet that I am the first American to have sailed around the world alone.  That is, of course, not true and a claim I have never made.  I was the first American to have sailed around Cape Horn alone.  Apparently some journalists can’t tell the difference.

        You can also read on the Internet that I am the greatest sailor who has ever lived.  While I appreciate the compliment, that, too, is a claim I have never made and never will.  That there has never been one greater,  well, that might be true.

        Back to Skull Creek and GANNET.

Skull Creek: a great photo and an impressive voyage

        The photo, which might have been a painting by Winslow Homer, was taken by Steve Earley as he sailed SPARTINA up the Manokin River at dawn during his just completed spring cruise.  Zoom the photo as large as you can.  You will find his track and more photos here.

        I thank Steve for permission to use it.

————

        I thank Tom for a link to an article about the smallest boat to have circumnavigated.  The voyage was also made non-stop.

        I am surprised that the smallest circumnavigating boat is this large, and while it does not diminish the achievement, I wonder why if he had no sponsors there all those signs on the hull and sails.

        Free advertising?

————

        A rainy morning.

        I checked the radar on a phone app—and though that now seems commonplace, it really is almost miraculous—and think the rain is coming to an end.  I hope so.  I need some things from the supermarket and I need exercise.